"Mary Burns is a story teller who knows what she knows and how to tell it. She gives us the north as exotic yet banal; the far reach of the Canadian experience, and yet its centre. Suburbs of the Arctic Circle is an accomplished and memorable collection."(Katherine Govier, Literary Press Group's Writer's Choice Panel)

"Another novel about American baby-boomer angst over the 1960's legacy and the repercussions of Vietnam, you say? But wait, this one is really good. In fact (Centre/Center ) is a wonderful example of a novel that both illuminates and transcends the plight of a particular group of people in a particular place at a particular time. Tolstoy would have been proud." Language and Literature

Dave Carley on, "A Yukon Quintette". "The author is working a corner of the country that, if it is written about at all exists as a romantic outpost of the Canadian imagination. Dance hall girls, grizzled prospectors, nature both raw and noble. Burns, however, is clearly pursing a thesis that the residents of the Yukon are informed, confronted and often alienated from their vaunted geography, and she zeroes in on the displacement they feel."